Psychoflage

A young particle physicist makes an unexpected discovery, but can she control what happens to it?

Image by GerryShaw - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

The ethereal hum of the electronics, almost beyond the range of hearing, faded as Ma Mu’en turned down the dial on the high-voltage power supply. She stepped briskly along the rack of NIM crates, turning off each module with quick clicks of the switches. The new detector configuration seemed to be working well. Old Wang would be happy. They might get a paper out of this, and that would help her chances of promotion next year. She just wished the lab would give them some more up-to-date equipment. She was sure this ancient kit had been dug up from some basement as punishment.

She checked her phone, massaging her forehead with her spare hand and wondering whether the headache she had developed meant her period was coming early. Eleven-thirty. Lunchtime. She walked round the bench, stepping carefully over the power cables, and picked up the long-handled tongs. She reached into the heart of the detector and at arm’s length extracted the radium-beryllium source, then locked it in the lead-shielded safe. She peeled off the latex gloves and took off her lead safety apron. She logged out of the data acquisition PC, snapped her logbook shut, checked her dosimeter badge and headed out for lunch.

Her office was three floors above. Mu’en usually took the stairs, but the lift happened to be there as she passed it, so she stepped in and hit the 2. She checked her phone again, to see if her friend Xiaomin wanted to join her in the cafeteria.

OK. You finished that test already?

Mu’en read Xiaomin’s reply with a sinking feeling. That magnetic field test she had promised Old Wang. She would have to work through lunch, if she wanted it done properly in time for their meeting. What had she been doing all morning? Her headache was getting worse. The lift door pinged, and she looked out at the shiny faux-marble tiles of her office corridor. Where had she just come from? Had she been in a meeting? She didn’t usually take the lift.

She got back in and pressed the -1 button, then sent Xiaomin a voice message. “Sorry. I forgot. Still have to finish something. Could you get me a lunchbox and bring it to the lab?” They weren’t supposed to eat in the lab, but sometimes needs must.

She unlocked the lab door, turned on the lights. She pulled on her lead apron, then snapped a pair of latex gloves out of the box on the desk. Her head was pounding. Why hadn’t she done the experiment this morning as she had planned?

She unlocked the radiation safe, picked up the long-handled tongs and at arm’s length gripped the radiation source. She carried it carefully to the detector and slipped it deftly into its slot in the heart of the delicate nest of silicon and polyethylene. She logged in to the PC and started the data acquisition interface. Another message from Xiaomin.

OK. But are you crazy? You shouldn’t be eating down there. And what have you been doing all morning?

What have I been doing all morning? Mu’en massaged her temples and tried to remember. She flipped open her logbook and picked up a pen. She noted the date and time. 17th January 2024. 11:40 am.

Her eye fell on the last entry she had written. Lists of voltages and magnetic field intensities, as usual. A smiley face beside the last set, drawn with the same pen she now held. And the date. 17th January 2024. 9:15 am.

---

“Young Ma!”

Mu’en turned at the sound of Old Wang’s voice. He was limping towards her with his usual gusto. She waited for him to catch up. It had just stopped raining, and the pavement outside the main building was slippery. The clouds were still leaden above the lychee orchards that surrounded the CSNS campus with green. There was a new red banner above the main entrance. China Spallation Neutron Source Welcomes the Delegation from Canada TRIUMF. There were always delegations from other labs visiting, now that things had re-opened after the pandemic.

“Young Ma, I have good news!”

Old Wang was panting slightly as he joined her. He adjusted the thick glasses he wore and ran a hand through his patchy grey hair.

Mu’en smiled at the old man. She liked him, and he had decades of experience developing particle detectors, although sometimes his enthusiasms for tangential pet projects got the better of him. “What is it, Teacher Wang?”

“I bumped into Young Cao last night.”

Mu’en gave him a wary look, wondering where this was going. Cao Yifan was the Director of the CSNS, and ever since the incident with her last promotion application, someone she avoided direct contact with as much as possible.

“I was having dinner at the Expert Restaurant, you know, and Young Cao was there with whats-his-name, Young Pan. The Party Secretary, you know. So I took the opportunity to let him know about our results!”

Mu’en’s face fell. She and Old Wang had been testing the equipment for the last week, since that morning on the 17th, exploring the conditions in which the memory loss happened. She had wanted to report it the first time they had managed to replicate it, but Old Wang had persuaded her to wait, to test more. One of his hobby horses was seeking a scientific basis for traditional Chinese medicine, and he was convinced that their unexpected discovery could reveal something about the qi. She didn’t think a couple more days would do any harm. The effect seemed to be related to some combination of a certain magnetic field intensity and direction, with a certain voltage from the HPVS. And only when one particular NIM crate was used. Mu’en had found some articles on transcranial magnetic stimulation, and speculated that their apparatus had produced some specific EM field pattern which somehow prevented neurons from forming new memories. The headache faded quickly afterwards, and the dosimeter badges were normal. They had agreed to report it to the head of the research group the following week. But the last thing Mu’en wanted was for Director Cao to find out she was wasting time and resources on one of Old Wang’s side projects.

“He was very interested!” said Old Wang proudly. He appeared not to have noticed Mu’en’s change of demeanour. “He’s coming to visit the lab later to see for himself!”

Mu’en nearly dropped her milk tea. She thought of the mess in their small lab, the cables and duct tape and aluminium foil everywhere, the detritus of copper wires and crocodile clips and dot-matrix printouts that covered every surface. “What? When?”

“This afternoon! Come on, let’s go and get ready!”

---

The four men watched intently as Mu’en flipped the switches on the NIM crates. A video camera stood on a tripod in one corner. 2024-01-31 blinked in a corner of its display.

“I originally thought the BlackIce detector was a dead end, which is why the Institute didn’t invest much in the project,” Director Cao was saying smoothly. “But it turns out that this re-use of old equipment was actually a rather good investment!”

One of the men, the one in military uniform, came to stand beside Mu’en as she adjusted the output voltage on the HPVS. He was making detailed notes. She could smell the garlic and cigarettes on his breath.

---

“Young Ma, I want you to go to Mianyang next week.”

Director Cao was sitting behind the shiny surface of his faux-mahogany desk. He twirled a fountain pen slowly between his stubby fingers.

Mu’en stood a little straighter.

“Can I ask why, Director?”

“You remember our visitors last week? We’re developing a new partnership with the No. 1 Atomic Energy Institute in Mianyang. They want you to go and help them set up a system they’re building. Based on what you’ve, ah, achieved with the BlackIce detector.”

Mu’en looked at the floor, frantically trying to think of what to say. She knew the Mianyang lab, in the mountains of Sichuan, was military. She offered a silent prayer.

“Next week may be difficult, Director.” Her voice was shaking. She hardly knew how she had found the courage to say anything at all.

“What?” Director Cao looked at her sharply. “What do you mean?”

“I, uh, my family has some things going on. My son, he’s still small…”

“The week after, then. Speak to Ms Zhou to make arrangements.”

He turned back to the stack of documents waiting for his signature.

---

“I’m very sorry, Director, but I can’t go to Mianyang. Not just next week. I can’t go at all.”

“What do you mean?”

Mu’en took a deep breath. She and her husband had spent all the previous night praying and talking it over. They had decided that if she was fired, they would manage somehow. Now, she took a quick glance out the window at the bank of cumulus rolling in off the sea.

“I am not willing to participate in any military applications of this research, Director.” Her voice was stronger than she had expected.

“Stupid girl!” Director Cao stood up. He wasn’t a tall man, and at his full height he stood eye to eye with Mu’en, staring at her across the expanse of his desk. “Is this about your Christ, is that it?”

Mu’en nodded quietly.

“Stupid girl!” he repeated. She could see the anger rising in him. “Are you an idiot? Even after last year, you still think you can get away with this? Your religious activities cost you your promotion, you know. Do you want it to cost you your whole career?”

“No,” she replied. “But I refuse to participate in something that might cause harm to others.”

Director Cao flung his pen down on the paper in front of him. It rolled and stopped by the potted lüluo that trailed its glossy leaves across one end of the desk.

“You realise that the military is something that protects our country, not something that harms us? Do you not even have one shred of patriotism?” His voice rose with every sentence. “Is your foreign religion more important than your country? Do you want to be known as a traitor?” A speck of spittle landed on the polished surface of the desk.

Mu’en said nothing. Director Cao paced the floor of his office, casting furious glances at her.

“Ma Mu’en, get out,” he said eventually. “I don’t want to ever see you again.”

---

The security guards caught her that night, just after she heaved the NIM module into the creek between the lab and the lychee orchards.

---

Photo by Lyle Wilkinson on Unsplash

Twelve Years Later

From the edge of the bluff, the town looked like any other small town in the region. A few blocks of crumbling apartments, a dingy-looking hotel, faded storefronts with displays of Coca-Cola and chewing gum. The afternoon sun beat down, and a dry wind blew off the desert. This was the place, according to the co-ordinates his source had given him. It just didn’t look like it was hiding any secrets.

He told the van to drive down and park in the municipal carpark. Crossing the street toward the hotel, the spy set his Eye to record. No signal. That both worried him, and gave him the thrill of knowing he was on the right track. No matter. He had been trained in all the memory techniques there were.

The hotel lobby felt like a time warp. The cheap laminate of the reception desk, the dusty leaves of the plants, the clocks showing the time in Johannesburg and New York and Tokyo. The sleepy-eyed clerk only gave his ID a cursory glance before checking him in. He could see into the opposite building from the dusty net curtains of his fourth-floor hotel room window. There’s something wrong, he thought. They wouldn’t do this with any kind of real secret facility.

The spy changed into a pair of smart trousers and a sharply creased shirt. He crossed the street, pausing at the entrance to the building to read the plaque by the door. Institute of Desert Energy Research. This was the place.

“I’m here for an interview,” he told the receptionist. She checked his name and asked him to wait. He asked for directions to the bathroom. She pointed down the corridor to her left. As soon as he was out of sight, he looked quickly around and found the fire escape stairs. He headed down towards the basement.

When he found the door, he knew that what he sought was on the other side. He also knew that opening the door would trigger an alarm. His Eye might be disconnected from the outside, but it could still detect frequencies beyond the conventionally-visible spectrum. He crouched behind the door, watching and listening.

A man with a military bearing walked down the corridor behind the door, talking to someone over short-range p2p. “I’m sending my report now, sir.”

The spy hastily cycled through his scanners. He had to move fast. He smiled quietly as the document loaded in his Eye.

PSYCHOFLAGE RESEARCH FIELD REPORT #24.B

Psychoflage? The spy made a note to check the term later. He began to skim through the rest of the document, committing key points to memory. He could afford less than a minute with an intercepted file.

---

The morning sun glinted from the windshield as the spy approached. A crow took flight from a dry tree. He settled himself into the van with a satisfaction that was marred only by the headache that had started last night.

“Back to base,” he told the van. He was officially the new night watchman at the Institute of Desert Energy Research. The contract was in his pocket. He would just have to request a booster for his Eye for while he was down in that valley.

The black desert crunched under the wheels. At the top of the bluff, the spy asked the van to stop. He turned and looked down at the town, at the grimy apartment blocks and the sun-faded storefronts displaying Coca-Cola and chewing gum. What a waste of time. His source must have been mistaken. His head pounded, and he massaged his forehead. Had he had too much to drink? He didn’t think so. It had been a long time since he’d been on a bender. Must be the desert. He took a sip of water from his canteen. The corner of the contract document jabbed his thigh, and he pulled it out of his pocket. What the hell is this? He had ostensibly gone for that interview, but however hard he tried, he couldn’t remember it actually taking place. Maybe he had gone on a bender after all. No matter. If he’d seen anything important, he’d have remembered it.

---

Author’s note: The China Spallation Neutron Source is a real research facility in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, run by the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. However, all characters and events in this story are completely fictional.

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